District attorney reveals security findings in Western Psych shooting

John Shick killed Michael Schaab on Pitt campus in Oakland

UPDATED 8:49 AM EST Nov 30, 2012

PITTSBURGH -

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. has released consultant reports recommending security upgrades in the wake of a shooting at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in March.

A spokesman for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center didn't immediately comment on the findings by two private security consultants. They recommend $2.1 million worth of upgrades, including adding a command and operations center, a new security card access system for employees, video surveillance, panic buttons and emergency call stations.

One worker was killed and five others were wounded by mentally ill gunman John Shick before campus police fatally shot him on March 8.

Zappala has said he's still investigating whether anyone might be criminally liable for not preventing the shooting, but says UPMC officials have been cooperative and are planning $10 million in security upgrades.

UPMC officials declined comment on Zappala's remarks, but provided The Associated Press with a list of the most important security improvements -- including plans to have at least one armed officer available on all shifts at its Allegheny County hospitals and UPMC Hamot in Erie.

UPMC also plans to install walk-through metal detectors at its emergency departments in those hospitals and to have security available to check purses and other bags and backpacks visitors carry.

UPMC will also make specific changes to the clinic where the shooting occurred, including making the main entrance where gunman John Shick entered a portal only for employees with magnetic "swipe" security cards. (See the entire list of security plans.)

Shick critically wounded the front lobby receptionist, fatally shot a nurse, and wounded four other employees when after entering the main lobby that afternoon. He was fatally shot by Pitt campus police who responded in less than two minutes, but were unable to find and confront Shick before he wandered through various hallways for more than five minutes, Zappala said.

Zappala said the University of Pittsburgh plans to hire 20 additional police officers who will provide the round-the-clock armed presence for UPMC's Pittsburgh-area hospitals. UPMC also plans to arm them with Tasers so the officers will have a "non-lethal alternative" to stop intruders, Zappala said.

The prosecutor's wide-ranging investigation into the shooting continues to focus on a number of other areas, including whether Shick could have been involuntarily committed just days before the shooting.

In Photos: Evidence From Western Psych Shooting

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Surveillance video captured John Shick entering Western Psych just after 1:40 p.m. March 8.

Shick came to Pittsburgh a few months earlier as a graduate biology student at Duquesne University, before he was banned from that campus for harassing female students and withdrew from school. In the months before the shooting, Shick contacted UPMC doctors -- including some through its Resolve Crisis Network, a mobile mental health service -- about "a whole litany of maladies."

Investigators believe Shick wasn't physically ill, but nonetheless believed UPMC doctors at other facilities had misdiagnosed him and may have shot up the clinic in anger over those perceived wrongs. One physician recommended Shick be involuntarily committed to a mental facility in late February, but that didn't happen.

Zappala said Shick had been similarly committed at least twice in New York City, where he had previously been educated, and in Portland, Oregon, after fighting with police at an airport there in 2009. Had Shick been committed, and forced to take medicines to treat his mental problems in Pittsburgh, too, the shooting might have been avoided, Zappala said.

The prosecutor noted that Shick's mental commitment records weren't accessible under a nationwide law enforcement database, which is why Shick was able to buy the two guns he used in the clinic shooting in New Mexico.

Zappala said he's working with the county sheriff and law enforcement agencies in other jurisdictions to improve the sharing of such information to ensure guns can't be purchased by people who have been involuntarily committed. He's also investigating whether the county's Office of Behavioral Health may have prevented a warrant to involuntarily commit Shick from being issued after one doctor raised red flags in February.

Zappala said the quick response by campus police limited the carnage, but said better planning on several fronts might have prevented the shooting altogether.

"We were lucky that day," Zappala said. "But I'd rather effectuate plans that make a lot of sense to everybody than to be lucky again."

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